Cloning complex life forms; creating human embryos only to destroy them for research; engineering chimeras for medical experimentation. And now we learn that researchers are still feverishly pursuing that holy grail of mad science — creating artificial life:

Craig Venter, the controversial DNA researcher involved in the race to decipher the human genetic code, has built a synthetic chromosome out of laboratory chemicals and is poised to announce the creation of the first new artificial life form on Earth.

The announcement, which is expected within weeks and could come as early as Monday at the annual meeting of his scientific institute in San Diego, California, will herald a giant leap forward in the development of designer genomes. It is certain to provoke heated debate about the ethics of creating new species… [read more]

Sure, it’s only a chromosome — the plan is to introduce the chromosome into a cell which they believe it will then take-over thus becoming a new life form — but if they are successful in creating simple life forms, someone will use the knowledge to attempt creating more complex life forms. Where will it stop? Will it stop?

When and how did the medical profession become the most non-chalant about life?

Is it because they can’t find the soul in their medical textbooks?

I listened recently to a doctor who hosts a well-known radio program, and he was completely flabbergasted that anyone could object to harvesting human embryos for use in medical experimentation — apoplectic really. Experiments that thus far have produced nothing but tumors rejection and death.

And yet just the research itself was more important to him than any consideration for the human life that would be destroyed in order to carry it out. Likewise with cloning. Scientists have become so focused on whether or not they can do a thing, that they’ve completely lost interest in whether or not they should do a thing.